German Empire

The German Empire, known as Imperial Germany or the Second Reich, existed from the 1871 unification of Germany until the November Revolution of 1918, when the nation became a republic. It was a federation of 25 states, each with its own aristocracy, including four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies (six before 1876), seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Prussia, though just one of the four kingdoms, held roughly two-thirds of the empire’s land and people, and its king served as the German Emperor, a dominance written into the constitution.

Background

The empire was proclaimed on 18 January 1871, when the southern German states—excluding Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein—joined the North German Confederation. A new constitution took effect on 16 April, renaming the federation the German Empire and granting the title of German Emperor to Wilhelm I of Prussia’s House of Hohenzollern. Berlin remained the capital, and Otto von Bismarck, Prussia’s Minister President, became chancellor and head of government. Over 47 years, the empire grew into a European industrial, technological, and scientific leader; by 1913, it had the largest economy on the continent and the third-largest worldwide.

German researchers and inventors claimed one-third of all Nobel Prizes. The nation built Europe’s most extensive rail network, the world’s strongest army, and a rapidly expanding industrial base. Its navy, tiny in 1871, became second only to Britain’s Royal Navy within a decade.

Wilhelmine era

Bismarck, the first and longest-serving chancellor (1871–1890), began with liberal reforms but later shifted to conservatism, including measures against the Catholic Church. In foreign policy, he formed the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1879 and cultivated ties with the Ottoman Empire; this grew into the Triple Alliance with Italy in 1882. Though he denounced liberals and socialists as “enemies of the Reich,” he created pioneering social programs that became the basis of the modern European welfare state. In the 1880s, despite initial reluctance, Germany joined the colonial race, acquiring territories in Africa, the Pacific, and China, and building the third-largest colonial empire after Britain and France.

After Bismarck’s dismissal in 1890, Wilhelm II pursued Weltpolitik (“world politics”), a more aggressive and expansionist course that dismantled Bismarck’s alliance system and left Germany increasingly isolated. When the July Crisis of 1914 led to World War I, Italy left the Triple Alliance, while the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany. The emperor’s inconsistent and often unpredictable decisions contributed to the tensions that sparked the war.

World War I

During World War I, Germany’s plan to quickly capture Paris failed, and the Western Front became a stalemate. An Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food and supplies. On the Eastern Front, Germany succeeded, occupying large territories after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 helped draw the United States into the conflict.

By October 1918, after the failed Spring Offensive, German armies were retreating, its allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, and Bulgaria had surrendered. The empire fell in the November 1918 Revolution, when Wilhelm II abdicated, leaving a postwar federal republic to govern a devastated population. The Treaty of Versailles imposed reparations of 132 billion gold marks (about US$269 billion or €240 billion in 2019, or roughly US$32 billion in 1921), limited the army to 100,000 men, and banned conscription, armored vehicles, submarines, aircraft, and more than six battleships. The resulting economic devastation, worsened by the Great Depression, along with the humiliation and outrage felt by Germans, are seen as key factors in the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.

The German Confederation was created by the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815, following the Napoleonic Wars, as referenced in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris. The liberal Revolutions of 1848 were crushed after relations between educated liberals and urban artisans broke down, and Otto von Bismarck’s pragmatic Realpolitik—appealing to peasants and aristocrats alike—took over. Bismarck aimed to extend Hohenzollern control over the German states, which meant unifying them and excluding Prussia’s main German rival, Austria, from the future empire. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany.

The Second Schleswig War against Denmark (1864), the Austro-Prussian War (1866), and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) fueled a growing pan-German ideal and led to the formation of the German state, with victory for the Kleindeutsche Lösung (“Lesser German solution”). The German Confederation ended after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, which pitted the Austrian Empire and its allies against Prussia and its allies. This war partially replaced the Confederation in 1867 with a North German Confederation of 22 states north of the Main River. The patriotic fervor generated by these conflicts helped forge the new empire.